These prefab homes can be built in three weeks

How do you construct a custom-built terraced house in three weeks? Swap traditional materials such as bricks and mortar for prefabricated wooden frames that can be slotted into place.

London- and Liverpool-based architects shedkm used the technique for a new terraced block of 43 "hoUSes" (above) in Manchester, teaming up with developer Urban Splash and timber-panel company Insulshell to prefabricate walls, ceilings and floors. "The construction method uses existing timber technologies, but combines them in a new way," says Ian Killick, director of shedkm.

The company made each storey as a rigid six-sided box, meaning each unit was self-supporting. The boxes were transported to the site in New Islington, Manchester, for the March 2016 opening. Each box for the dwellings, which cost from £100,000 to build, took eight weeks to fabricate in Insulshell's factory.

Now, shedkm is constructing 800 houses in Tyne and Wear, finishing in September - and Insulshell has introduced a production-line system which will cut its current build time of eight weeks to three weeks. "Transportation is key to building in this way," says Killick. "At present there is a limited number of the right sort of vehicles, but that should change as demand increases. The sight of housing modules moving around our motorway network will become commonplace."